Thursday, October 30, 2003

I had to make it an early day today, so I am a little less with it than usual. The train in the morning is very different from the later trains. First of all there are fewer people which makes sense. The people are also very territorial about there seats and tend to sit on the aisle even in the three seaters. Of course when I got here everything was okay with the main process, but the parallel process didn't work out so well. We are working on getting it fixed so we can finally move to Oracle.

Last night was the first night of BoyCottaNO, which proved to be pretty successful. I went home and cooked myself a nice dinner of penne and red sauce. I have such a hard time judging how much pasta I will end up with from just dropping in the dry pasta, so halfway through cooking it I through in more (bad idea) so some of the pasta wasn't exactly al dente. Overall it was good and I continued to multi task at home which involves updating my iPod with more music. It is taking forever and I think I can put all of my cd's on it without a problem, but I don't know if I want to just dump everything on there and have some crappy stuff OR do I want to start putting some of my live DMB CD's which would prove to be of lesser quality but better music than my Titanic Soundtrack, Britney Spears and Chicago (the band) CD's.

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

I took some pictures yesterday in the Common yesterday and have put them into a nice little slide show for all of you lovely people out there. Not many trees have changed but the few that have looked great. It is so ironic how the leaves down here are better than the leaves up in Maine when I drove all the way up there last weekend. Hey if you can't go to the foliage just wait until the foliage comes to you.

It is raining again, but it isn't putting a damper on my spirits at all. The strange thing about the rain is how it can be so frustrating when you look out in the morning and know the commute will be just a little more difficult and wet. I usually dread standing at the train station waiting in the pouring rain while my pants get soaked because of the run off from my waterproof jacket. Next there is the dreaded activity of sitting in between two similarly wet people on the train for a nice musty smelling half hour trip into Boston. Finally you walk out of North Station and see the rain just pouring down on to the North End and realize being the constant goal seeker you are that you will forgo the relatively dry and painless subway trip and instead march down the flooded streets of the Hub. Only once I started walking down Canal Street with some music playing in my ears did I realize how much I enjoy walking in the rain. Yes you read correctly I actually enjoy the rain, but only if I am on foot.

Today I was reminded of a warm rainy night a few years ago when I was still in college. It was a typical late spring evening in Orono, I had been to class and went for dinner at the Union before I put on my rain jacket and made my way out into the showers which had been falling all day long. The walk from the Union to Somerset Hall takes about ten minutes and involves several winding paths which lead to my dorm atop the highest hill on campus. I zipped up my coat turned on my CD player and began my journey into the wet wonderland. I remember I was listening to an acoustic Dave Matthews disc, because it is all I listened to while walking around campus that year. The music combined with the rain put a huge smile on my face, it was perhaps one of the happiest moments of my life, but I couldn't exactly tell you why. Perhaps it the feeling you get once you are completely soaked and know you are going to be wet for a while and just don't care anymore. Whatever it was, the strange combination of my mood, the weather, the music and the lighting created some sort of wave of happiness which overtook me and I couldn't help but smile. It is certainly a brief moment in time I will remember for the rest of my life and somehow oddly ranks up there in my long list of happy times.

So while you are out there in the rain today or any day for that matter, just remember while the rain can sometimes be annoying and a nuisance, it can also bring out some very odd feelings of joy, just accept your new saturated state and enjoy the little packages of joy from above.

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

I was reading through my Boston Metro this morning while riding on the train and listening to the musical stylings of Howie Day and came across this at and could barely contain the laughter. I hope they have a lot of open positions, because I know a bunch of Santas that could fill the position.

Well this one goes out to Britt. You missed out on a great opportunity to personally meet real live Boston Celtics players. Yes its true this morning between 7:30 and 8:30 two players were signing calendars at both the Government Center and Park Street stations. I stopped by to take some pictures for you, but didn't want to stand in line and besides the fact I wouldn't know which players they were I also wouldn't know what to say when I got to them. However I knew I had to take pictures for you so you could see what you missed. I almost called you, but I knew you would be sound asleep so I refrained. Oh man its sometimes good to be the early bird.

I am considering starting a scientific study on the commuting situation at Salem station. I leave my house at the same time everyday, but the parking lot and number of people waiting for the train varies daily. I want to write down some environmental factors, such as the temperature, the weather, and the day of the week to see if they cause the parking lot to fill up sooner. I thought the rain yesterday would fill the parking lot, but it still had spaces left when I got there at 7:20, and today with relatively nice weather the lot was completely full at 7:20. Can anybody shed some light on this?

Monday, October 27, 2003

Weekend by the Numbers160 miles driven in my car16 people I hung out with over the course of the weekend (B, B, V, L, F, B, C, J, R, M, K, A, M, S, J, C)9 meals eaten700 dollars spent (580 on computer stuff)6 hours of taped television I watched206 pictures takend2.50 price of one rose not a package of two5 times we played the predator game20 minutes for Beans to finish her fajita2 hawks/eagles in Boston Common feasting on squirrels6 pictures of the eagle I took with other people's cameras125 minutes to go shopping for computer stuff45 minutes until I finally listened to a song on my new iPod8 hours spent with the Morin's this weekend (Thanks for dinner, twice!!)0 times I was bored this weekend

Friday, October 24, 2003

Last night I rushed home from work, jumped in my car and drove over to the North Shore Mall. I walked into the Apple Store and told the guy, "Could I have a 20 Gb iPod." Here is the conversation that followed:"You can't have one, but you can buy one," said the fat Apple worker."Oh well I tried," I replied.The other worker said, "I'll go out back and get one, hold on a minute.""Thank you," I said gratefully.I then remembered I had one more question to ask, which I had forgotten from last time. So I asked the fat guy, "Can I ask you a question?""Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill is the answer to your question," he cleverly snapped back."Okay, I don't think so, but anyway, I only have a 10 Gb hard drive and was wondering if I would be able to put music on it, move the songs to the iPod, delete the music and then put more music on until the iPod is full," I asked.He answered, "No way, if your hard drive became erased you'd have to put all your files back on to your hard drive.""Is there anything I can do?" I enquired."You would have to buy a new hard drive," he quickly snorted back.I quietly uttered back, "Okay, well I guess I'm not getting an iPod then, thanks."

The guy who went to get my iPod came back and I had to tell him I couldn't buy it and told him why. In a nicer tone and demeanor he confirmed my worst fears and said the manual sync wouldn't work how I thought it would. If anybody has insight into this for me I would love to hear it from them. It looks like I might end up investing in a new hard drive, at least that way I can download some of my ski movies and finally put something together.

Despite the fact that you can't see the flurries in the picture we definitely had some today. Apparently out in western Massachusetts they received up to an inch of snow, which is strange because on this day last year we also received snow. It is kind of exciting to think that winter is right around the corner, but at the same time I am not taking this cold raw weather very well. I have a request, in an effort to make life easier and better for everybody when you go to the slideshow could you please sign up for an Ofoto account. It won't cost you anything and even if you don't plan on storing pictures you will have access to all of the slideshows you view that have been shared by me or anybody else. It keeps track of all shared albums you have accessed under your username. After today I will set up any slideshows to require sign in.

Last night we had BoCaNO at the Sevens and it was good, pretty par for the course; I might need to miss a couple of weeks to make it fresher. I got home and watched Fraternity Life on MTV, which just had me glued to the TV. One of the pledges started the night making out with this one girl(Sharie) and then saw another girl (Lauren) and quickly moved to her. However, Sharie was a PSYCHO and kept pestering him while he was trying to hook up with Lauren. He ended up sleeping with Lauren, but not after Sharie came in while they were in bed together and told him to go to hell. Sharie came back again in the morning and gave Slater a hard time again and he told her she was banned from the house. Ha, classic TV. The next show on was called Room Raiders, where a guy goes into three girls rooms and looks everything over, including underwear drawers, hampers, closets and anything else in their room. He then decides which one he wants to date based on her room. It's quite amusing and thankfully the guy was a comedian and made it extremely funny. My one issue was how one of the girls was 18 and he was 24, strangely enough he picked her.

We had a fire drill at work yesterday and I decided to document it with my camera. Hey you have to spice things up somehow, once we got back inside I made a little slideshow and lucky for you I have put it out onto the internet. Fire Drill Pictures with captions

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Oh man it doesn't get more fun then trying to see how many Dave Matthews titles you can squeeze into a series of sentences:pseed36 (1:02:43 PM): Oh, you are so damn lucky. What you are may even be considered crazy. You never know when all those songs will come in handy though, like if you retired to bethel and became a bartender or something, pouring pints of that Halloween ale for the mug clubbers. You'd also have to learn that spoon trick to make the black and tans. Be careful with that bar though. The space between the liquor table and the bar is pretty narrow. Don't crash into it. That would be trouble. You could also hire back that waitress, Angel, from Liams. You know her, she's all that girl raised her baby, remember? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Auto response from KeegSands (1:02:43 PM): Ok so here's the Dave breakdown:38 shows I've been to.100 full shows on disc 2500 mp3s including different versions5 hours of ants6 hours of two step31 days I could listen to Dave and not here the same version twice.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

pseed36 (1:03:03 PM): Probably be a fool to think that she'd ever work at Suds everyday again though. Even if she did come back, she probably would not stay for more than 1 winter anyway. She wouldn't care if she let you down, so that may be a bad idea. An' another thing& I heard from joe that when she left the 1st time she didn't even say goodbye. I guess she thought there was too much BS with the new management. Recently its been hard to find good staff up there. You gotta take the best of whats around and hope it all works out.

For once I was a good kid and held back on spending a huge chunk of change on a tech gadget. The gadget in question is the iPod.I was actually in the Apple Store last night and asked the guy a bunch of questions about Firewire and Windows compatability. I filled in the rest of the information I had been wondering about and then began to walk out of the store. I thought twice and then walked out of the store without and iPod, my reasoning was, well I don't really know, since I am confident that I will use the hell out of it and while it is $400, the amount of music I can put on it, calendar, contacts and various games are definitely worth the money. The use of it during the ski season alone will make it worth it. Perhaps I will save $20 and buy it in NH this weekend for my anticipated foliage trip

I have so much to say, but have to get to work now. However I can squeeze this one comment out. What is the deal with all of the people with the blonde highlights and all this hair lightening that is going on? I wish everybody would just go to their natural hair color so we could see how many brunettes there are out there. It is just out of control.

Friday, October 17, 2003

"The Yankees win. Boone hit a homerun." The quote from the guy on the train which will haunt me for the rest of my days. A half dozen commuters all piled up at the front of the car to hear the play by play from some guy with an FM tuner on his Discman. Its amazing and comforting how moments like this can bring people together. After the homerun we all chatted about missed chances, Grady Little's decision to pitch Pedro into the eighth, the curse, tv ratings and the weather. While sitting there and listening to my fellow fans I realized sports are more than just for making money or showcasing star athletes, but they are about community and a sense of unity for people all over the country. Aside from national tragedies, which fortunately occur rarely, when do people from one geographic region come together and feel a togetherness like we all felt last night? Walking to work this morning I knew I wasn't the only one with a sinking feeling in my stomach and everybody else had the same thoughts running through their head. It actually allows you too put a smile on your face knowing you aren't alone.

Now for all of you collage kids, who really didn't know much about the BoSox or baseball for that matter before this heartbreaking season, I would like to personally welcome you to the hell that is a Boston fan's life. My mom told me two nights ago how she remembers me staying up late watching the 1986 World Series and how upset I was after the Buckner incident. At the time I didn't know anything about curses or the heart ache Boston had been through, but this time around I was prepared. I knew the only possible thing that can come from an early BoSox lead is the loss of that lead and they didn't disappoint. I was a fool to think I would actually see them win a World Series so early in my life. I think about my grandfather and how after the age of three in 1918 went on to endure 80 years of the BoSox failing to win a World Series, now talk about frustrating. In those 80 years he witnessed them lose four World Series (1946, 1967, 1975, 1986) all in the seventh game, two ALCS (1988, 1990) both four game sweeps and one ALDS (1995). It just wouldnt be fair for me to get off so easily with only one World Series (1986), four ALCS(1988, 1990, 1999, 2003) and one ALDS(1995) losses. So all you young fans out there prepare yourself for a long and painful relationship with our favorite Fenway residents and remember these three words which have begun to haunt me and hopefully won't haunt us much longer. MAYBE NEXT YEAR

Thursday, October 16, 2003

If any of my readers weren't watching the BoSox last night, I would love to hear the story of how you escaped from the captor, because you must have been kidnapped to miss it last night. I watched it at John Harvards during BoCaNO last night and all I can say is spectacular. However it is too bad about the Cubbies.

If the boys win tonight it is going to be cwazy in beantown, prepare the riot gear. Okay I have to get going because I have not done any work yet. However two things to notice in the pictures, Kate and Mark's PDA picture? I don't know you tell me if that qualifies, someone needs to help me with a definition for PDA, and Amy's series of pictures proving that she can't have a picture taken without closing her eyes.

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Yep I know I didn't update yesterday and almost didn't update today, but I was inspired by the rain, which seems to happen alot, and by Britt's new LJ background. No I am not going to have a new background, because the pictures I have already take long enough for people to update. Her new background inspired me to put a link to my favorite flash movie of all time, no offense Bren, but this is just too funny. Click ----->Funny Mario Flash Movie

The rain this morning in Salem was out of control it made for a rather interesting commute. Once again the umbrellas were out in force but most were overturned by the high winds. I was forced to debut my new jacket today, despite the fact I wanted to save it for a cold sunny day instead of putting it to the rain test right away. It didn't disappoint and kept my upper body dry, but my legs were soaked because the rain would just run down the jacket on to my pants. I hate that!!!

Last night I watched the Cubs blow their game in the 8th inning. It was unbelievable and goes to show you how a baseball game can completely change in as little as ten minutes. Basically the Cubs were up 3-0 and were five outs away from the World Series and then things got out of control. A fan interefered with the ball out in foul territory so that the left fielder wasn't able to make the catch. A few pitches later and the score was tied thanks to a huge double. Florida proceeded to tack on four more runs before the end of the inning and ended up winning 8-3. What a stressful game? Turns out the poor guy that caught the ball was not treated to well by the ground and had to be escorted out of his seat because of threats from other fans. Security actually gave him a change of clothes so the irrate fans wouldn't recognize him in the streets. Lets hope the Cubs win and he doesn't become the Bill Buckner of the Cubs 2003 playoff run.

Monday, October 13, 2003

So you can see it was a BUSY photographing weekend. Hanging out with everybody was great. I was even able to get some time to myself and did some reading of the book Urban Tribes. It is a great book and basically talks about what seems to be OUR LIVES. Nobody getting married just a bunch of friends who hang out do fun things and support each other. So far it is one of the best nonfiction books I have read in a long time.

I saw this thing on MTV called the Chocolate Factory. It is basically a big cauldron for melting chocolate to use in various desserts. I love chocolate as much or more then the next person, but who is buying this thing. Not only do you have to find a place to keep this giant thing, but who can use that much chocolate. It holds about a half gallon of melted chocolate, I could see dipping a couple stawberries, but what do you do with the chocolate after your done. Just seems like a waste. Check it out for yourself, Original Chocolate Factory

One more thing... Last night I was at Barnes & Noble with Britt, Vanessa, Andy, Nissa and Ryan. Vanessa and I were randomly bouncing about the store from Magic Eye books to kids joke books to children's books and finally into the music department. We looked over to see the other four all lined up at the listening stations. At first we just kept looking at CD's but eventually moved over to sit next to them. Now picture six of us sitting next to each other all with headphones on, it was very classic. Of course Ryan then came up with a game we could play. The rules were that everybody starts with a certain artist and we attempt to get to a different artist using the Similar Choices option for each artist. For example our first try was to get from Hillary Duff to Nirvana. We all loaded Hillary Duff into our kiosks and then began the race. It is a very difficult game, because you first have to get out of the genre into a middle ground genre and move towards the music type of the destination band. We played about four rounds before the store closed. It was so much fun.

Friday, October 10, 2003

I took this picture yesterday while at lunch with Julie. The low resolution from Shutterfly doesn't do it any justice. I also wish I had been more paralell to the building, does anybody know how to rotate a picture 2 degrees.

Looking forward to the weekend, because it might involve skiing tomorrow and will certainly involve pictures of the lovely foliage up in NH. Oh what a weekend.

Okay I'm done.

Lying on the roof countingThe stars that fill the sky I wonder ifSomeone in the heavens looking back down on me - I'll never know-David J. Matthews

Thursday, October 9, 2003

On my way to the train today I spied this interesting view and decided to stop to take a picture. So here they are.

Last night I was at work late again, but then went to Emmet's Pub for BoCaNO. It was a rather low turnout with only Mark, Kate and Clemence there when I arrived. It didn't matter to me as long I was able to get something to eat. As you all should know by now the BoSox won the game and now lead the series 1-0. Upon returning home I went upstairs at my house to watch the end of the baseball game with my landlord, Jesse and his buddy, Patrick. Those guys are crazy into the BoSox, so it was pretty funny. They get pretty psyched and never hesitate to yell at the top of their lungs. Very Classic, BoSox Fans!!!

I am kind of out of it today hence the odd entry. Everybody have a great day.

I stepped off the train and saw this beautiful sight and decided to take a picture of it. The foreground kind of messes up the picture but its not like I'm selling these things. After this I was inspired to go to the movies last night and saw "Lost In Translation" at Hollywood Hits in Danvers. If you haven't heard of the movie it stars Bill Murray as a washed up actor working on an advertising campaign in Japan. He befriends a woman who is also struggling with her time in Japan. They have a very unique relationship/friendship and the story was great. If you can find a theatre playing this move you should definitely check it out. Bill Murray's performance is great, even after all these years he is still hilarious.

Another funny thing I saw today and something I see almost everyday is the vacuum guy in the city. If you don't know him, he rides around on this thing about the size of a tractor.He is always tooling around on his little machine there and it is just funny to watch him. He seems to not care about the people walking down the street and just backs up whenever he wants to. A couple of weeks ago I actually saw him park it for lunch and while I was tempted to get a picture on it, the guys craziness kept me off of it.

Tuesday, October 7, 2003

Okay I know this is crazy, but I was looking at Mr. Yeat's LJ and a couple of weeks ago he has a bunch of aerial photos. It got me to thinking about how much I would love to take aerial photos myself. I decided to look into it seeing as there is a nice little airport on Plum Island. It turns out it costs $70 for a half hour scenic flight and $130 for an hour, for up to 3 people. Would anybody be interested in splitting the costs and flying around the North Shore some weekend this month. I basically want some photos of the 'Bury and the ocean, but at 100 miles an hour we could theoretically fly to Boston and back with time to spare. Any takers? Check it out Plum Island Airport Scenic Flights

BoSox won their big game last night, it was too much for me to watch until I ran out of other things to watch on tv. It is only going to get worse now that they are playing the Yankees. All these nail biters are going to cause the number of heart attacks in Boston to rise over the next three weeks.

A random old woman was walking in front of me yesterday near City Hall plaza and all of a sudden she turned around and started yelling at me, "You aren't going to do the [unintelligible word] behind me." She pushed me and I just kept walking wondering whether she was just a crazy hobo or an insane old woman. Who knows?

Question to ponder: Why does the control switch on fans go directly from Off to High? Shouldn't it be a more gradual fan speed like Off->Slow->Medium->High?

So yeah I had quite a busy weekend, but I believe the story would be better told through the two photo albums above. I hope you enjoy them all I certainly enjoyed taking most of them. The one part of the weekend I don't have anything for is yesterday, but basically we all sat around at Amy's house and watched the BoSox come back and beat the A's to push the ALDS series to a fifth game. They go at it again tonight at 8. I get so nervous watching these games, if they make it to the World Series I will have to just watch something else and wait for the results.

Thursday, October 2, 2003

The picture above is of my desktop. Click on it to see a better quality versoin and once that loads if you wait for the expander thing in the lower right hand side you can see it at full size. I wish I could make it more clear, but shutterfly just loves to destroy the quality of images when viewing them on their website. I would love for you all to post pictures of your desktops. Since it is tough for everybody to actually put them out there, if you email them to me at ksands@statestreet.com, I will post them. Simple steps to do that:1) Get your desktop looking how you want it, without any confidential information showing.2) Hit the Print Scrn button (Yes it actually does something, it takes a picture of the current screen)3) Open up Paint. Start>Programs>Accessories> something like that.4) In Paint, Edit>Paste.5) Save it down using File>Save As.6) Send it to me.I will post them as I get them.So moving on...

Last night was the first game of the ALDS for the BoSox and I decided to watch some of it before bed. It was crazy and I became rather stressed especially watching Pedro pitch over way over his season high in number of pitches. At around 12:30 I decided it was time to go to bed and see how fate would handle things this year. I kept having these dreams and everybody would tell me a different score for the game. When I finally turned the TV on I saw the soon to be unforgettable walk-off bunt which put the BoSox away for good in the twelfth inning. I can only imagine how many people stayed up until 2:47 for this devastating loss. I am very limited in my knowledge of baseball, but Pedro was unbelievable and really showed why he is so important to this team and in my opinion made the millions of dollars we pay him last night. However, two player with surprisingly quiet bats last night were David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, I am hoping this afternoon they come out of their little slump and put the hurt on the A's, so we can at least get two games in Boston this weekend. I have doubted the BoSox all year because I worry that they can't step up to the challenge when they need to, let's hope I am wrong.

One more thing try this road challenge test. Take the test My score was 750.

Wednesday, October 1, 2003

I took some random pictures yesterday in the city. Notice the nice people getting arrested at Downtown Crossing. John and I were coming back from lunch and about ten police cars flew by and congregated on Winter Street for some arrests. We got out of there quickly just in case things went badly.

Not much else going on. I did try a warm coffee for the first time yesterday, a tall caramel Macchiato. It was pretty good, next up the White Chocolate Mocha. Ooh very exciting. I think I am ready for the weekend to start already, it looks to be a fun one with some apple picking and perhaps a quick trip up to the mountains. What do you think girls? I mean really Van has never even seen mountains.

Fun Flash games. Pick the apple game in the lower right hand corner for the most appropriate for the season.